"Debauchery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about talking of me. Those intellectual fellows sit in each other's rooms and get drunk on foreign ideas in the same way young Guards' officers treat each other with foreign wines. Merest debauchery. ...Upon my Word,"—Razumov, enraged by a sudden recollection of Ziemianitch, lowered his voice forcibly,—"upon my word, we Russians are a drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must have: to get ourselves wild with sorrow or maudlin with resignation; to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... masses. They make inequalities, out of which grow all the miseries of society, because there is no limit to their avarice, parsimony and cruelty. So they thrive, all the rest of humanity may go to the dogs; so they revel in luxury and debauchery, all the rest of humanity may revel in poverty, vice and crime; so they enjoy all the blessings of organized society, all the rest of humanity may bear its curses. Man is essentially a selfish animal. Self-preservation is the very first ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... destroying their corn, killing their domestic animals, and whipping the women and children. They carried with them, as articles of traffic, whiskey and other intoxicating liquors, and by distributing them in the tribe, made drunkenness and scenes of debauchery common. Black Hawk and the other chiefs of the band, remonstrated against these encroachments, and especially in regard to the introduction of spirituous liquors among their people: and, upon one occasion, when a ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... mutilated several brave officers and students, who had had the bad luck to stand up against him. He himself was anything but pleasant to look upon, his natural plainness having been rendered repellent by a life of low debauchery. He cherished a secret grudge against the bridegroom and bitter feelings toward the bride, because the latter had so plainly shown her aversion for him when he had ventured to ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... then, this eternal babble of the economists about the improvidence of laborers, their idleness, their want of dignity, their ignorance, their debauchery, their early marriages, etc.? All these vices and excesses are only the cloak of pauperism; but the cause, the original cause which inexorably holds four-fifths of the human race in disgrace,—what is it? Did not Nature make all men equally ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the body is kept several days, and there is a grand concourse of both sexes, with beating of drums, dances, and debauchery, kept up with feasting, etc., according to the means of the relatives. The great ambition of many of the blacks of Angola is to give their friends an expensive funeral. Often, when one is asked to sell a pig, he replies, "I am keeping it in case of the death of any of my friends." ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... seems to have been said among the conspirators in regard to any plans of riot or debauchery, subsequent to the capture of the city. Either their imaginations did not dwell on them, or the witnesses did not dare to give testimony, or the authorities to print it. Death was to be dealt out, comprehensive and terrible; but nothing more is mentioned. One prisoner, ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... motive in the establishment of these schools, though, was to decrease the "Prophaness and Debauchery ... owing to a gross Ignorance of the Christian Religion" (R. 237) and to educate "Poor Children in the Rules and Principles of the Christian Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England." Writing, in 1742, Reverend Griffith Jones, an organizer for the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the disorders they generate shake the very foundations of morals; and while shattering the industry, they undermine the economy and frugality and rend the integrity of mankind. We doubt whether any of the great forms of evil incident to our imperfect civilization—the slave-trade, debauchery, pauperism—cause more individual anguish or more public detriment than these incessant revolutions in the value and tenure of property. Those afflict limited classes alone, but these every class; they relax and pervert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... coronals everywhere. Lord Lovelace's taste that, and not Lady Byron's, which is perfectly simple. You know that she was buried in the same vault with her father, whose coffin and the box containing his heart were in perfect preservation. Scott's only grandson, too, is just dead of sheer debauchery. Strange! As if one generation paid in vice and folly for the genius of the past. By the way, are you not charmed at the Emperor's marriage? To restore to princes honest love and healthy preference, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Savonarola rose before us like a spectre in the history of the past. Savonarola tried to reform the conduct of the clergy and to maintain the purity of the Church, but failed. He made the republic of Florence a model Christian commonwealth. Debauchery was suppressed, gambling was prohibited, the licentious factions of the times were there publicly destroyed. He arraigned Rome for her sins. The Roman party turned against him and accused him of heresy, the punishment of which was death. He declared his innocence, and desired ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... commissions which they are invested with? And what is an army without discipline, subordination, and obedience? What, but a rabble of licentious vagrants, set free from the common restraints of decency, exempted from the necessity of labour, betrayed by idleness to debauchery, and let loose to prey upon the people? Such a herd can only awe the villages, and bluster in the streets, but can never be able to oppose an enemy, or defend the nation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... was broached to the world, there was prescription in favor of violence, debauchery, and selfishness; when Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and their disciples reconstructed philosophy and the sciences, there was prescription in favor of the Aristotelian philosophy; when our fathers of '89 demanded ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... truth be said of women, than of men, that the more knowledge, the more virtue; the more understanding, the less courage. Why then is the plume elevated to the head? and what must the present mode of female education and manners end in, but in more ignorance, dissipation, debauchery and luxury? and, at length, in national ruin. Thus it was at ROME, the mistress of the world; they became fond of the most vicious men, and such as meant to enslave them, who corrupted their hearts, by humouring and ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... of men, even in their primitive state. The possession of reason is antagonistic to such a belief; and man was most probably elevated above the beast by the faculty of reason in this respect as in others. Promiscuous indulgence is always evidence of debauchery, and a departure from that natural course which is prompted by an innate sense of propriety characterizing mankind. The law is very indefinite with regard to what constitutes a legal marriage. It is an unsettled ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... heads of stable-boys and serving maids? Have you not kept the poor worse housed than your dogs and your horses, worse fed than your pigs and your sheep? Is there an ancient house among you, again, of which village gossips do not whisper some dark story of lust and oppression, of decrepit debauchery, of hereditary doom? ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Heaven's vengeance upon fashionable vice. Her son had brought her stories of the life at Whitehall, terrible pictures of iniquity, conveyed in the scathing words of one who sat apart, in a humble lodging, where for him the light of day came not, and heard with disgust and horror of that wave of debauchery which had swept over the city he loved, since the triumph of the Royalists. And Lady Warner had heard the words of Milton, and had listened with a reverence as profound as if the blind poet had been the prophet of Israel, alone in his place of hiding, holding ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... servants of all. Christianity wishes no forms of government, nor will it make them lawful, yea necessary, whilst overgrown wealth may find out means to chain down despairing poverty, by which reckless debauchery may riot in palaces, whilst in the hut, hard by, the restless laborer cannot earn bread enough to prolong his miserable existence. It will have the right to moderate enjoyment purchased by self-control and self-denial, and the capability ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... occasion, to give it to themselves. It is not for weak beings, who enter into a composition with guilt, and cover selfishness and cowardice with the name of prudence. It is not for corrupt wretches, who rise from the bed of debauchery, or from the mire of indigence, to feast their eyes upon the blood that streams from the scaffold. It is the portion of a people who delight in humanity, practice justice, despise their flatterers, and respect the truth. While you are not such a people, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the forenoon of life, and stupid all its afternoon. The vigour and freshness, which should have been stored up for the purposes of the hard struggle for existence in practical life, have been washed out of them by precocious mental debauchery—by book gluttony and lesson bibbing. Their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon their callow brains, and they are demoralised by worthless childish triumphs before the real work of life begins. I have no compassion for sloth, but youth has more need ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the dens of a prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered to the gods; the religious rites of ancient Asia, and those of Greece which fell under their influence, are notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often also dishonored by frightful sacrifices. The ancient civilization of Mexico was elegant and even refined in some respects; but the altars were stained, every year, with the blood of thousands of human beings; and the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... represented, with the exception of that of tailor, which was exercised by only one member of the community. At one time, out of 9,584 beggars in the town of Bombay, there were only five Parsis and one Parsi woman. As to the class of the unfortunate victims of vice and debauchery, a Parsi has not hesitated to affirm that not one of his co-religionists could have been accused of living on the wages of shame. [78] Travellers have made the same remarks. Thus, according to Mandelslo, adultery and lewdness were considered by the Parsis as the ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... to slay the soul as the other strove to destroy the body, so incredible were their deeds, so enormous their depravity! The air was filled with blasphemy and impiety, with the groans of the gluttons and the howling of drunkards. The wildest night hid not greater debauchery than was here committed in ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... the alarm and policy of administration occasioned to be quartered in the vicinity of the metropolis, where I was for the first time. A young nobleman of very distinguished family undertook to be my conductor. Alas! to what scenes did he introduce me! To places of debauchery and dens of destruction. I need not detail particulars. From the lures of the courtesan we went to an adjoining gaming room. Though I thought my knowledge of cards superior to those I saw play that night, I touched no card nor dice. From this my conductor, a brother officer, and myself ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... find a great deal. Yes, upon my soul! The peasants have vodka, the educated young people, shut out from activity, waste themselves in impossible dreams and visions and are crippled by theories; Jews have sprung up and are amassing money, and all the rest give themselves up to debauchery. From the first hour the town reeked of its familiar odours. I chanced to be in a frightful den—I like my dens dirty—it was a dance, so called, and there was a cancan such as I never saw in my day. Yes, there you have progress. All of a sudden I saw a little girl of thirteen, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thought such exploits worthy of a man, then I do not account him brave. And, indeed, if modesty, and decency, and chastity, and, in one word, temperance, is only upheld by the fear of punishment or infamy, and not out of regard to their own sanctity, then what lengths will adultery and debauchery and lust shrink from proceeding to, if there is a hope either of escaping detection, or of obtaining impunity ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... involuntary movement she was beside him, looking down upon the unconscious face; and wonderful it was to see that all its lines were smoothing out, and all the marks of years of debauchery. Even the sallow hue of them seemed to be changing in his cheeks. Extraordinary that the healthy colour of early manhood should reappear in the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however, (as has since been executed with so much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... permitted to ridicule their masters, and to speak with freedom upon any subject. It was usual for friends to make presents one to another; all animosity ceased; no criminals were executed; schools were shut; war was never declared, but all was mirth, riot, and debauchery. In the sacrifices the priests made their offerings with their heads uncovered,—a custom which was never observed at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... account of the Greek historian fully tallies with the denunciation of the Hebrew prophets against the sin and wickedness of Babylon. Her inhabitants had gradually lost their warlike character. When the Persian broke into their city they were reveling in debauchery and lust; and when the Macedonian conqueror appeared at their gates, they received with indifference the yoke of a ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... for those who were privileged to eat of it, there were carried up to the dead-house the baskets of long- pig. It is told that the feasts were long kept up; the people came from them brutishly exhausted with debauchery, and the chiefs heavy with their beastly food. There are certain sentiments which we call emphatically human—denying the honour of that name to those who lack them. In such feasts—particularly where the victim has been slain at home, and men ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under the walls of Constantinople. The Emperor was deposed by his own people, and his son, Alexius V, crowned during a revolution in the city, which followed an unsuccessful attack by the crusaders in July. The second and successful assault, in April, 1204, with its sequel of pillage and debauchery, forms the subject of Pears' brilliant narrative. The city, during these troubles, suffered from two fires, of which the second, in July, 1203, deserves to be reckoned among the great ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... nature worship there gradually evolved a phase of worship, which in the beginning had for its basic principle an exalted ideal of the purpose and the powers of the female sex-function; but this ideal sunk to the level of debauchery and sex-degradation, in which the symbol of the female sex-organ of generation was worshipped, literally, although not reverently; and yet from the fact that it is only upon the temples and in the groves dedicated to worship ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... horse and throwing himself upon the ground. The rest followed close, and a score of them soon gathered about us, some lying at full length and some sitting on horseback. They all belonged to a company raised in St. Louis. There were some ruffian faces among them, and some haggard with debauchery; but on the whole they were extremely good-looking men, superior beyond measure to the ordinary rank and file of an army. Except that they were booted to the knees, they wore their belts and military trappings over the ordinary dress of citizens. Besides their swords and holster pistols, they ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... been said, is essentially a fighting faith and never shows to full advantage save in the field. The faith and luxury of a wealthy capital, the debauchery and variety of vices which would spring up therein, naturally as weeds in a rich fallow, and the cosmopolitan views which suggest themselves in a meeting-place of nations, were sore trials to the primitive simplicity of the "Religion ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... disappointed, and like our own Chaucer, but more frequently, he pours forth lamentations to his empty purse. He was evidently a friend of most of the prominent men of letters of his time, and he entered freely into the debauchery of the period. Thus his verse gives a representation of the debased manners of the day in gay society. His style was remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... brown hair was closely trimmed. The warmth of the Gallic wine which it was his habit to drink to excess at night, caused his eyes to shine, and colored his pale cheeks. His face was imperious, his laugh mocking and cruel. He was leaning on one elbow, holding in one hand, thinned with debauchery, a wide gold cup, enriched with pearls. He looked at it leisurely and fitfully, still fixing his piercing gaze on the two prisoners, who were placed in such a manner that Albinik ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... again, and the little Queen birds must starve another day, till the wash-tub earns them a mouthful of something to eat. Give that woman a vote and she will keep the money she earns to clothe and feed her children, instead of its being spent in drunkenness and debauchery ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... commands to seek out and challenge Bellmour. At the same time he reveals his love as though he told the tale of another, but he is met with scorn and only bidden to fight the husband who has repulsed her. Bellmour, meantime, in despair and rage at his misery plunges into reckless debauchery, and in company with Sir Timothy visits a bagnio, where they meet Betty Flauntit, the knight's kept mistress, and other cyprians. Hither they are tracked by Charles, Bellmour's younger brother, and Trusty, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... to great corruption of manners and the commission of terrible crimes. During the reign of Philip de Male, there were committed in the city of Ghent and its outskirts, in less than a year, above fourteen hundred murders in gambling-houses and other resorts of debauchery. As early as the tenth century, the petty sovereigns established on the ruins of the empire of Charlemagne began the independent coining of money; and the various provinces were during the rest of this epoch inundated with ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... boring and incomprehensible, like music to one who has no ear. He looked at people simply from the business point of view, and divided them into competent and incompetent. No other classification existed for him. Honesty and rectitude were only signs of competence. Drinking, gambling, and debauchery were permissible, but must not be allowed to interfere with business. Believing in God was rather stupid, but religion ought be safeguarded, as the common people must have some principle to restrain them, otherwise they would not work. Punishment ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Protestant of the Church of England, so born, so brought up, and so died; his conversation was so honest that I never heard him speak a word in my life that tended to God's dishonour, or encouragement of any kind of debauchery or sin. He was ever much esteemed by his two masters, Charles the First and Charles the Second, both for great parts and honesty, as for his conversation, in which they took great delight, he being so free from passion, that made him beloved of all that ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... if possible, to prevent all that Debauchery that is acted in the Streets of this great City every Night, I dress'd up my self as like a Beau as possibly I could, and then taking my short Staff in my Pocket, I went t'other Night abroad, to see what Discoveries ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... he said, that people liked to be amused; and he supplied this want in a section of his paper entitled "Mercure Scandale; or, Advice from the Scandalous Club, being a weekly history of Nonsense, Impertinence, Vice, and Debauchery." Under this attractive heading, Defoe noticed current scandals, his club being represented as a tribunal before which offenders were brought, their cases heard, and sentence passed upon them. Slanderers of the True-Born Englishman ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... heaps of the unburied dead in the public places, "forming pestilential volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrines thronged with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds flinging themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber bands assassinating the dying and plundering the dead; of three thousand neglected children collected in one hospital and then left to die; and of the death-roll numbering at last fifty thousand out of a population ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... their elections," Dolly went on, smilingly. "But the women of the present day wouldn't stand it. They would change it right away. They wouldn't continue giving the men an excuse two or three times a year to engage in all that carnage and debauchery for no rational reason. Do you know the sort of election the women will hold, Warren, if they ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... was seized with a furious passion for philosophy, and so great was the concourse of geometricians that they raised up quite a cloud of dust in the palace, but when Plato fell out of favour, and Dionysius gave up philosophy, and went back again headlong to wine and women and trifles and debauchery, then all the court was metamorphosed, as if they all had drunk of Circe's cup, for ignorance and oblivion and silliness reigned rampant. I am borne out in what I say by the behaviour of great flatterers and demagogues,[373] ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... their blushes in their bosoms. So strongly implanted is this ingenuous and amiable modesty in youth, which is frequently laid aside when engaged in the vortex of pleasure, that it is one of the highest charms of beauty; and wretches only, degraded by debauchery and systematic vice, are capable of insulting this sentiment. A scrupulous regard to modesty and truth will not permit me to pursue the description of these amusements farther than observing, that they prepare them for a profound and tranquil sleep ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... the deepest gloom and depression. Henry VIII. might have heard that voice mingling with the groans of his victims; Charles II. could not altogether shut it out from the scenes of his midnight revel and debauchery. But no such hopeful contrast meets us in the features or the history of the neighboring continent. Democracy, it is true, the rough and hardy growth of the German forests, struck an earlier root and flourished at first with better promise there ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... a less tendency to criminality, debauchery, and intemperance in the race; this, again, can in a measure be ascribed to their family influence, which even in our day has not lost that patriarchal influence which tinges the home or family life in the Old Testament. Crimes against the person or property ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... glee sit down, All joyous and unthinking, 'Till, quite transmugrify'd, they're grown Debauchery and drinking; O would they stay to calculate Th' eternal consequences; Or your more dreaded hell to state, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... ways a remarkable man; he is exempt from the imputation of being a little man in any sense. His ideas are daring; they can contemplate the debauchery of the Senate; the purchase of the President, and the disruption of the Supreme Court; they cannot stoop to the committal of petty larceny. So every dollar of the funds raised for the expenses of the campaign ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... her side and sucked blood from the wounds—a modern "Succubus." Pare mentions the perverted appetites of pregnant women, and says that they have been known to eat plaster, ashes, dirt, charcoal, flour, salt, spices, to drink pure vinegar, and to indulge in all forms of debauchery. Plot gives the case of a woman who would gnaw and eat all the linen off her bed. Hufeland's Journal records the history of a case of a woman of thirty-two, who had been married ten years, who acquired a strong taste for charcoal, and was ravenous for it. It ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... refrained, is obscene discourse, which is the language only of proficients in debauchery, who never repent, but in a gaol or hospital; and whose carcases relish no better than their discourse, till the body becomes too nasty for the soul to stay ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... or the Turkish sultan a heretic. But this way of viewing Islamism in some inconceivable relation to the Church of England, or to Protestantism, would not be more extravagant than the attempt to fasten upon an oriental prince the charge of debauchery and a dissolute life. The very viciousness of Asiatic institutions protects him from such reproaches. The effeminate delicacy of easterns, and the morbid principle of seclusion on which they build their domestic honour, will for ever secure both Hindoo Pagans and Mussulmans from blame ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... readjusting itself to this abrupt displacement of values. With noiseless suddenness all the lurid light which the advertiser had thrown around the star died away. The faces which mocked and mourned, the clutching hands, the lines of barbaric ornaments, the golden goblets of debauchery, the jewelled daggers, the poison phials—all those accessories, designed to produce the siren of the posters, faded out, and he found himself face to face with a human being like himself, a thoughtful, self-contained, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... handsome. The veins of the face were swollen with blood, the features became coarse, the eyes lost their lashes and grew hard and dry. No longer careful of his person, Philippe exhaled the miasmas of a tavern and the smell of muddy boots, which, to an observer, stamped him with debauchery. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... disgrace. He was universally shunned. Whenever he appeared, people flew away, so that they might not be seen in communication with him. His solitude was so great, that for a whole month only one friend entered his house. In the midst of this desertion, he had no resource but debauchery, and the society of his mistress, Madame d'Argenton. The disorder and scandal of his life had for a long time offended the King, the Court, and the public. They now unhappily confirmed everybody in the bad opinion they had formed of him. That the long disgrace he suffered ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of Minucius Felix" (c. 25), we meet with the following startling challenge—"Where are there more bargains for debauchery made, more assignations concerted, or more adultery devised than by the priests amidst the altars and shrines of the gods?" This, of course, refers to the state of things in the third century, but there is no reason to ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... sword, being left at proper and convenient places, are put on at night after the shop is shut, or when they can slip out to go a-raking in, and when they never fail of company ready to lead them into all manner of wickedness and debauchery; and from this cause it is principally that so many apprentices are ruined, and run away from their masters before they come out of their times—more, I am persuaded, now, than ever were to ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... Morality, Decency and Modesty," with the street for bed if they fall sick ("and it is almost a Miracle that Stench, Vermin, and Want should ever suffer them to be well"), oppressed with poverty, and sunk in every species of debauchery, "the Wonder in Fact is," cries Fielding, "... that we have not a thousand more Robbers than we have; indeed that all these wretches are not thieves must give us either a very high Idea of their Honesty or a very mean one of their Capacity and Courage." ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Shere Dil, his two brothers. The chief of Cabool owed his success to Futteh Khan, the chief of the great family of Barukzyes, and the most powerful of the Affghan nobles. Futteh Khan, in fact, governed the kingdom under the designation of vizier, while Mahmood abandoned himself to debauchery. If Mahmood, however, submitted to the ascendancy of his able minister, not so did his son, the prince Kamrau. By his orders Futteh Khan was seized at Herat and deprived of his eyesight; and a few months afterwards ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... should be demolished, and thus "the divine justice reserved the completion of Antony's punishment for the house of Cicero" (Plutarch). He was subsequently appointed proconsul of Asia or Syria, but nothing further is known of his life. In spite of his debauchery, there is no doubt that he was a man of considerable education and no mean soldier, while Brutus, in a letter to his father (Epp. ad Brutum, ii. 3), even goes so far as to say that the son would be capable of attaining the highest honours without ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of assurance, blended however with much juvenile vanity, he joined the band. He listened to that counsel of vulgar wisdom which is disastrous to souls like his: "Do as others do." He accordingly did do as the others; he knew all their debauchery, or he imagined he did, for however low he went, he was never able to do anything mean. He was then so far from the faith that he arranged love-trysts in the churches. "I was not afraid to think of my lust, and plan a scheme for securing the deadly fruit of sin, even within ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... was almost as if all feeling had passed from him, absorbed in a deep curiosity at the signs which the years had set upon a once handsome face. Even in death they remained. And only a dreadful pallor robbed it of the deeper signs which debauchery had impressed. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... he was not long in getting commissions in considerable numbers. It only depended on himself to win riches and fame with all speed. But his chief idea was to amuse himself in company of Bruno di Giovanni and Nello, and squander along with them, in debauchery, all ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Sabine farm; if you deny my assertion I ask who dare wager 1,000 sesterces on its untruth? You have squandered more than a third of the property you inherited from your father and dissipated it in debauchery" (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, vii, 11). It was about this time that the Oppian law came up for repeal. The stipulations of this law were as follows: No woman should have in her dress above half an ounce of gold, nor wear a garment of different ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the people by supplying employment!" Has the world passed into its dotage, or simply become an universal asylum for idiots? If wanton waste makes business better, then Uncle Sam has but to squander in bal-masques, or other debauchery, his seventy-five billions of wealth to inaugurate an industrial boom! To gratify their taste for the barbaric, to advertise themselves to all the earth as the eastern termini of west-bound equines, the Bradley-Martins wiped out of existence $500,000 ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the emancipated, and even of the enslaved Africans, instructed in common literature—in the principles of virtue and religion, and in those mechanic arts which will keep them most constantly employed, and, of course, will less subject them to idleness and debauchery; and thus prepare them for becoming good citizens of the United States: a privilege and elevation to which we look forward with pleasure, and which we believe can be best merited by habits of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Queen's Hall, the Prime Minister avoided the subject. But from now on, the debauchery of thought and speech progressed hour by hour. The grossest spectacle was provided by Sir Eric Geddes in the Guildhall at Cambridge. An earlier speech in which, in a moment of injudicious candor, he had cast doubts on the possibility of extracting from Germany the whole ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... It is a mercy our own thoughts are concealed from each other. Oh! if, at our social table, we could see what passes in each bosom around, we would seek dens and caverns to shun human society! To see the projector trembling for his falling speculations; the voluptuary rueing the event of his debauchery; the miser wearing out his soul for the loss of a guinea—all—all bent upon vain hopes and vainer regrets—we should not need to go to the hall of the Caliph Vathek to see men's hearts broiling under their black veils.[402] Lord keep us from all temptation, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... disgrace of Fenelon. Hence, in the reign of Louis XV., orgies that Messalina would have blushed to share; while cruelties[A] of which Suwarrow would hardly have been the instrument, were employed to lash into a momentary paroxysm nerves withered by debauchery. Here let us pause for a moment, to remark upon the effect which false opinions may produce upon the happiness and well-being of distant generations. Nothing is so common as for trivial superficial men—the class to which the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... small investor, discourages thrift, and encourages gambling and speculation; while perhaps worst of all is the trickiness and dishonesty which it implies—for harm to morals is worse than any possible harm to material interests, and the debauchery of politics and business by great dishonest corporations is far worse than any actual material evil they do the public. Until the National Government obtains, in some manner which the wisdom of the Congress may suggest, proper control over the big corporations ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lap of pleasure, lap of luxury; free living. indulgence; high living, wild living, inabstinence^, self- indulgence; voluptuousness &c adj.; epicurism, epicureanism; sybaritism; drug habit. dissipation; licentiousness &c adj.; debauchery; crapulence^. revels, revelry; debauch, carousal, jollification, drinking bout, wassail, saturnalia, orgies; excess, too much. Circean cup. [drugs of abuse: list] bhang, hashish, marijuana, pot [Coll.], hemp [Coll.], grass [Coll.]; opium, cocaine, morphine, heroin; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... strong he was, how ferocious and dangerous. His age might be guessed at near sixty for all his vivacity, for at close quarters I could see unmistakably the senile arc in either eye, and, as the reader knows, his hair and beard were very white. Debauchery may have left these marks upon him, but had not worn out his force. That, at any rate, was still enough to resolve the irresolute Francis, an incurable believer in the native goodness of mankind, to obey him in this instance. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... is paid into the treasury of the society. Therefore one may say, as was said of Cleomenes, that, in this respect, his lordship was ultimus herorum, the last of the heroes. And the profusion of the best provisions, and wine, was to the worst of purposes—debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste. I will give but one instance; upon the grand day, as it was called, a banquet was provided to be set upon the table, composed of pyramids, and smaller services in form. The first ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... to Westcott, who had recovered from his first fright, and who for some time had neither prayed to God nor cursed his luck, that he might save himself by swimming. In his boyish days, before he had weakened his texture by self-indulgence and shattered his nerves by debauchery, he had been famous for his skill and endurance in the water, and it now occurred to him that he might swim ashore and save Katy Charlton at the same time. It is easy enough for us to see the interested motives he had in proposing to save little Katy. He would wipe out the censure ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... And when Carnegie returns, he sheds tears and wrings his hands because of the corruption that has been exposed, and he fails, as many in Pittsburg seem to fail, to note the necessary, if subtle, relation that must exist between all this corruption and debauchery between all this art and music, and—shall I ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Britons had been able to defy the hordes of disciplined soldiers and armed men who, for nearly three months, day and night, had never ceased to attack the position; and the Kaisarbagh, that pretentious, garish palace of the Kings of Oudh, the centre of every kind of evil and debauchery. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... evening when she had gone to bed he felt uncontrollably restless. He had not seen Larry for weeks. What was he about? What desperations were hatching in his disorderly brain? Was he very miserable; had he perhaps sunk into a stupor of debauchery? And the old feeling of protectiveness rose up in him; a warmth born of long ago Christmas Eves, when they had stockings hung out in the night stuffed by a Santa Claus, whose hand never failed to tuck them up, whose kiss was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... flat-nosed, full lips, down-looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay-footed. To give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments; was much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye or one mischief or other. This is the same Evans who made so many antimonial cups, upon the sale whereof he chiefly subsisted. He understood Latin very well, the Greek tongue not all; he ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... some testimony of the spirit of low debauchery; and the man himself, with his flushed and sensual countenance, his unwashed hands, and the slovenly rakishness of his whole appearance, made no unfitting representation of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which vices, debauchery and unrestrained gluttony grew to a head, and costly banquets superseded triumphs for victories. The common use of silken robes prevailed, the textile arts were encouraged, and above all was the anxious care about the kitchen. Vast spaces were sought out for ostentatious houses, so vast that ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... been part of her spoils. The Pantheon had become a lupanar of divinities that presided over birth, and whose rites were obscene; an abattoir of gods that presided over death, and whose worship was gore. To please them was easy. Blood and debauchery was all that was required. That the upper classes had no faith in them at all goes without the need of telling; the atmosphere of their atriums dripped with metaphysics. But of the atheism of the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... father, was perhaps, in personal character, the most dissipated, degraded, and corrupt of all the sovereigns in the dynasty. He spent his whole time in vice and debauchery. The only honest accomplishment that he seemed to possess was his skill in playing upon the flute; of this he was very vain. He instituted musical contests, in which the musical performers of Alexandria played for prizes and crowns; and ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... discovered his plots and caused him to be arrested and put to death (31). For several years Tiberius had been living in retirement on the island of Capreae. There his enemies represented him as given over to debauchery, while the lives of Roman citizens were never safe from his suspicions or from the accusations of the delators, men who presented formal charges of crime, there being no public prosecutors. Earlier in his reign Tiberius ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... unnatural red, as if either the effect of the Bacchanalian orgies had not passed away from the constitution, or a morning draught had been resorted to, in order to remove the effects of the night's debauchery. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... here, Whitelocke thought fit to give way to some passages of diversion to please his people, and to keep them together in his house, and from temptations to disorder and debauchery in going abroad, besides the danger of the streets in being late out. He therefore had music, both instrumental and vocal, in concert, performed by those of his own family, who were some of them excellent in that art, and himself sometimes ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... young men. There were girls in their early teens, and toothless hags, decrepit and faltering. Faces which, in wild loveliness, might have vied with the white beauty of the daughters of the East. Faces seared and crumpled with weight of years and nights of debauchery. Men were there of superb physique, whilst others crouched huddled, with shuffling gait towards the manger seats, to seek rest for their rotting bones, and ease ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... living in harmony and happiness together; and not only professing, but fully understanding and practicing, the precepts and principles of the Christian religion. Adams had instituted the ceremony of marriage, and he assured his visitors that not one instance of debauchery and immoral conduct had occurred ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... unforced sinner, than the fact that he resists efforts to reclaim him. Ask these faithful and benevolent missionaries who go down into these dens of vice and pollution, to pour more light into the mind, and to induce these outcasts to leave their drunkenness and their debauchery,—ask them if they find that human nature is any different there from what it is elsewhere, so far as yielding to the claims of God and law is concerned. Do they tell you that they are uniformly successful in inducing ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... blacks much more so. They, poor wretches, have had the privilege of getting drunk, and they avail themselves of it. The heaviest scourge of New Orleans is its multitudes of free black and coloured people. They wallow in debauchery, are quarrelsome and saucy, and commit crimes, in proportion to the slaves, as ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... but dauntless courage and high animal spirits. Nor should we deny him another much rarer praise,—a vein of good humor and kindliness, which did not forsake him through all his long career, amidst the riot of debauchery or the rancor of faction. So agreeable and insinuating was his conversation, that more than one fair dame as she listened found herself forget his sinister squint and his ill-favored countenance. He used to say of himself in a laughing strain, that though he was the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... people especially among the religious class, are not willing to admit that drunken debauchery and carousal is altogether outside the realms of Christianity, and can only be engaged in by those wholly devoid of the love and grace of God. It is however a source of astonishment to the pure-hearted child of God to find so many professing ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... away at the end of a narrow alley, making no effort to vaunt its existence to the world at large, and to many persons, even in the near neighbourhood, it was entirely unknown. Like a gentleman to whom debauchery has brought shame and the desire to conceal himself from his fellows, so the "Punch-Bowl" seemed an outcast amongst taverns. Chance visitors were few, were neither expected nor welcomed, and ran the ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... were closed, complaints having been made by the inhabitants as to the danger of fire from the fireworks. Pepys mentions the Gardens as "a pretty place," and John Locke records "bowling at Marebone and Putney by persons of quality." These Gardens formed the scene of McHeath's debauchery in the "Beggars' Opera." Devonshire Place, built on the site, is a ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... together from their infancy, without knowledge of the distinctions and decencies that are proper to be paid to each other's sex, they squabble like two brothers. The father is one of those who knows no better than that all pleasure is debauchery, and imagines, when he sees a man become his estate, that he will certainly spend it. This branch are a people who never had among them one man eminent either for good or ill: however, have all along kept their heads just above water, not by a prudent and regular economy, but by expedients ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... interest. We know that a forced service is worth nothing, and that a subject compelled to be so against his will is not far from being an enemy. We confess, however, that your determination to go gives us pain. We are aware of your industry and temperance, and that you are not addicted to any vice or debauchery. This province is your country. You and your fathers have cultivated it; naturally you ought yourselves to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Such was the design of the King, our master. You know that we have followed his orders. You know that we have done everything to secure ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... wrote: "Had I remained and become a member of the university at that time, as I should have done in case of success, the profligate acquaintances I had there would have introduced me to scenes of debauchery, in which I must in all probability, from my ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... of their propensities: for instance, Westminster School is fortunately situated in the immediate neighbourhood of a famous place of instruction called Tothill (vulgarly Tuttle) Fields, where every species of refined lewdness and debauchery, and manners the most depraved, are constantly exhibited; consequently they enjoy the great advantages of learning the slang language, and of hearing prime chaunts, rum glees, and kiddy catches, in the purest and most bang up style. He has likewise a fine opportunity ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... XV. reached his legal majority. The regent became chief minister, and soon paid the penalty of his career of debauchery, leaving as his successor the Duke of Bourbon, degenerate scion of the great Conde and one of the chief speculators in the Mississippi bubble. A perilous lesson had two years before been instilled ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... publickly avowed these absurd and criminal pretensions. On returning from Parto, he remained a long while at Quito, continually feasting and rejoicing; he and his adherents abandoning themselves to every degree of licence and debauchery, particularly in regard to the sex. It is even asserted that Gonzalo caused a citizen of Quito to be assassinated, whose wife he publickly lived with, and that he hired a Hungarian soldier, named Vincente Pablo to execute this infamous deed. This man was afterwards hanged at Valladolid, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... parish priests, lowered the religious influence of the clergy. The abuses of the time foiled even the energy of such men as Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln. His constitutions forbid the clergy to haunt taverns, to gamble, to share in drinking bouts, to mix in the riot and debauchery of the life of the baronage. But such prohibitions witness to the prevalence of the evils they denounce. Bishops and deans were still withdrawn from their ecclesiastical duties to act as ministers, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... interview to which it was possible to give a serious turn, and I boldly broke ground and begged her to suffer my poor friend to go in peace. After a good deal of finessing she consented, and the next day, with a single word, packed him off to Naples to drown his sorrow in debauchery. I have come to the conclusion that she is more dangerous in her virtuous moods than in her vicious ones, and that she probably has a way of turning her back which is the most provoking thing in the world. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... reputation, and were often more numerous than those of the villagers who cared to enforce the laws; while there was always present an element which abetted and throve on the vice of the river-men. The result was that mischief, debauchery, and outrage ran riot, and in the inevitable fights the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... seventy, has been a sturdy smoker for years. Goethe did not smoke, neither did Shakespeare. I cannot recall a single allusion to Tobacco in all his plays; even Sir Toby Belch does not add the pipe to his burnt sack. But Shakespeare hated every form of debauchery. The penitence of Cassio is more prominent than was his fun. 'What! drunk? and talk fustian and speak parrot, and discourse with one's shadow?' Shakespeare held drunkenness in disgust. Even Falstaff is more an ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... hate the great captain as he himself did. He sought to infuse jealousy into his mind and to lead him to believe that Hunyady aimed at the crown. His slanders found the readier credence in the mind of the youthful sovereign as he was completely stupefied by an uninterrupted course of debauchery. At last the King was brought to agree to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his life and his substance in the defence of his country and religion. They summoned him in the King's name to Vienna, where Ladislaus, as an Austrian prince, was then staying, with the intention ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... campaigns in France, crystallised into definite parties the discordant tendencies that had been well marked since the crisis of 1371. The old king was a mere pawn in the game. His health had been broken by the debauchery and frivolity to which he had abandoned himself after the death of Queen Philippa. He was now entirely under the influence of Alice Perrers, a Hertfordshire squire's daughter, whose venality, greed, and shamelessness made her the fit tool ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... sumptuously decorated, and his other estates were large and productive. The Casine villa was made the scene of Antony's revelry; he and his fellow-rioters plundered the rooms, emptied the cellar, burned the library, and carried on every kind of debauchery and excess. Few passages in all eloquence are more telling than that in which Cicero with terrible power contrasts the conduct of the two successive occupants. [2] Varro, through the zeal of his friends, managed to escape Antony's ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of Sir John Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him narrowly. He entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as to give to his whole countenance the expression of habitual sottishness and debauchery. And this artificial form of the mouth he retained, unaltered, from the beginning to the end of the play, with the exception only that, as the play went on, the lips gaped and hung more and more ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... every man and boy in the ship entered fully into the captain's eagerness. All longed for prize-money; the greater number, probably, that they might spend it as sailors in those days got rid of their hard-earned gains, in wild extravagance and debauchery; a few might have thought of their old fathers, mothers, and sisters, whose comforts they hoped to increase; or some one, more romantic than his shipmates, might have had in view some quiet woodbine-covered cottage, on the sunny slope of a hill, with ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... method may be sufficient. The vileness of man is proved by the remark (not peculiar to Edwards), that men who used to live 1,000 years now live only 70; whilst throughout Christendom their life does not average more than 40 or 50 years; so that 'sensuality and debauchery' have shortened our days to a twentieth part ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Varney, dismounting, rifled his pockets, turning out the lining, that it might appear he had fallen by robbers. He secured the Earl's packet, which was his chief object; but he also took Lambourne's purse, containing some gold pieces, the relics of what his debauchery had left him, and from a singular combination of feelings, carried it in his hand only the length of a small river, which crossed the road, into which he threw it as far as he could fling. Such are the strange remnants of conscience which remain after she seems totally subdued, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... arches appeared in all the leading public buildings, columns generally forming the external, and arches the internal construction. Fabric after fabric arose on the ruins of others. The Flavii supplanted the edifices of Nero, which ministered to debauchery, by ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... floor, I spilt some on the counter and on my hands, and I let it dribble over my coat. In five minutes I had made the room stink like a shebeen. I loosened the collar of my shirt, and when I looked at myself in the cover of my watch I saw a specimen of debauchery which would have done credit to a Saturday night's ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... desire for instruction; that 'their thoughtlessness, and spirit of independence, ingratitude, and want of sincere, straightforward dealing, often try us in the extreme;' that drunkenness is increasing, and that the natives are 'gradually swept away by debauchery and other evils arising from their intermixture with Europeans,' I acknowledge that he has stated enough to warrant his despondency, and to shew that it proceeds from no momentary disappointment alone, but from a settled ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... of the struggle between the new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser, satiated with pagan sensuality, turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled by the hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up in despair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old debauchery. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... but by a very slow process. Each boat would require from ten to thirty hands, according to its size. A number of these boats frequently sailed in company. The boatmen were proverbially lawless at every town and landing, and indulged without restraint in every species of dissipation, debauchery and excess. But this race has become reformed, or nearly extinct;—yes, reformed by the mighty power of steam. A steamboat, with half the crew of a barge or keel, will carry ten times the burden, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easily overreached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruption are the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible and hypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there is already no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blind fury and interested faction among the electors in many parts of this kingdom!—nor is it surprising, or at all blamable, in that class of private men, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... considerable quantity of his iron money; but, on the contrary, the worth of speech was to consist in its being comprised in a few plain words, pregnant with a great deal of sense: and he contrived that by long silence they might learn to be sententious and acute in their replies. As debauchery often causes weakness and sterility in the body, so the intemperance of the tongue makes conversation empty and insipid. King Agis, therefore, when a certain Athenian laughed at the Lacedaemonian short swords, and said, "The jugglers would swallow them with ease ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... creature from perdition. He seems, indeed, about this time, to have been seized with an unusually violent fit of zeal for his religion; and this is the more remarkable, because he had just relapsed, after a short interval of selfrestraint, into debauchery which all Christian divines condemn as sinful, and which, in an elderly man married to an agreeable young wife, is regarded even by people of the world as disreputable. Lady Dorchester had returned from Dublin, and was again the King's mistress. Her ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mark of the first prize. Alas, that it did not mean to me what it now does! It meant anything rather than total abstinence; it was an unfailing sign of drunkenness; it told of shameful revels, of days of debauchery and nights of misery when not passed in beastly slumber. That ribbon is now a symbol of holy temperance—it was then a souvenir of ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... instead of making use of that superior knowledge with which the Almighty, the common Parent of mankind, had favoured them, to strengthen the principle of peace and good will in the breasts of the incautious Negroes, the Europeans have, by their bad example, led them into excess of drunkenness, debauchery, and avarice; whereby every passion of corrupt nature being inflamed, they have been easily prevailed upon to make war, and captivate one another; as well to furnish means for the excesses they had been habituated ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... not unto the voice of admonition. They persisted in their sins, and their well-merited punishment overtook them.[167] God forgives all sins, only not an immoral life. And as all these sinners led a life of debauchery, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... to speak. "If you are indeed Ulysses, great are your wrongs, for your property has been, squandered, and riot and debauchery have filled your palace. But at your feet now lies Antinous, whose wild ambition meant to slay your son and divide your kingdom. Since he is dead, spare the rest of your people. Our gold and treasures shall defray the expense, and the waste of years shall be refunded to you within the day. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... Ames's sermons became historical in the Puritan controversies. It was delivered on St Thomas's day (1609) before the feast of Christ's nativity, and in it he rebuked sharply "lusory lotts" and the "heathenish debauchery" of the students during the twelve days ensuing. The scathing vehemence of his denunciations led to his being summoned before the vice-chancellor, who suspended him "from the exercise of his ecclesiastical function and from all degrees taken or to be taken." After Cary's election he ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... what would have been his opinion then of the woman taken in adultery; but he remained single and consequently incompetent to decide upon that delicate matter. All that, you see, is an encouragement to debauchery and a stimulant to lewdness. A devout woman, when she is young and pretty, is on a slope which leads quite straight to Monsieur ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... wounded, lamed, with their fine new shirts torn, their blankets burned, and with nothing but their ammunition and tobacco saved, they would start off down the river to hunt in the Ohio country and begin again the same round of alternating toil and debauchery. In the history of the country there is hardly a more depressing chapter than that which records the easy descent of the red man, once his taste for "fire water" was developed, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the goblets were over and over again replenished, and the terrible oaths and ribald songs continued, and the dice rattled, and the revelry became louder still, till the many walls of the old castle shook and reverberated with the awful sounds of debauchery, blasphemy, and crime." ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... possessed a voice of thunder. His countenance was that of an Ogre on the shoulders of a Hercules. He was as fond of the pleasures of vice as of the practice of cruelty; and it was said there were times when he became humanized amidst his debauchery, laughed at the terror which his furious declamations excited, and might be approached with safety, like the Maelstrom at the turn of tide. His profusion was indulged to an extent hazardous to his popularity, for the populace are jealous of a lavish expenditure, as raising their favourites ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... were a species of purgatory to Berlioz, against whose bounds he fretted and raged without intermission. The director's receptions were signalized by the performance of insipid cavatinas, and from these, as from his companions' revels in which he would sometimes indulge with the maddest debauchery as if to kill his own thoughts, he would escape to wander in the majestic ruins of the Coliseum and see the magic Italian moonlight shimmer through its broken arches, or stroll on the lonely Campagna till his clothes were drenched with dew. No fear ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... new? You have made fun of authority of all sorts to-day, which is every bit as vulgar as denying the existence of God. So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan worn out by debauchery! Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its emotions in a final despair ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and debauchery met the detectives at every turn, but, helped in a great measure by the publicity the American newspapers gave to the movements of his pursuers, Eyraud was able to elude them, and in March they returned to France to concert further plans for ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... that young men, corrupted in early youth and addicted to women and debauchery, are inhuman and cruel; their passionate temperament makes them impatient, vindictive, and angry; their imagination fixed on one object only, refuses all others; mercy and pity are alike unknown to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... worse, or into better hands in all London: into worse, because keeping a house of conveniency, there were no lengths in lewdness she would not advise me to go, in compliance with her customers; no schemes, or pleasure, or even unbounded debauchery, she did not take even a delight in promoting: into a better, because nobody having had more experience of the wicked part of the town than she had, was fitter to advise and guard one against the worst dangers of our profession; and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Folly Fair was held on the open space of ground afterwards used as Islington Market. Booths were erected opposite the Infirmary and in Folly Lane. It was like all such assemblages—a great deal of noise, drunkenness, debauchery, and foolishness. But fairs were certainly different then from what they have been of late years. They are now conducted in a far more orderly manner than they were formerly. I went to a large one some years ago, in Manchester, and, on comparing it with those ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... thirty-seventh year, was indeed a kindly dispensation. It is the fashion to say he died of drink; many a man has drunk more and yet lived with reputation, and reached a good age. That drink and debauchery helped to destroy his constitution, and were the means of his unconscious suicide, is doubtless true; but he had failed in life, had lost his power of work, and was already married to the poor, unworthy, patient Jean, before ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... therefore, under the appellation of luxury, to rank the enjoyment of these things among the vices, we either tacitly refer to the habits of sensuality, debauchery, prodigality, vanity, and arrogance, with which the possession of high fortune is sometimes attended; or we apprehend a certain measure of what is necessary to human life, beyond which all enjoyments are supposed to be excessive and vicious. When, on the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... and delicate features, whose slight elegant figure was arrayed in a crimson-satin doublet, slashed with white, and hose of the same colours and fabric. The young nobleman in question, whose handsome features and prematurely-wasted frame bore the impress of cynicism and debauchery, was Lord Roos, then recently entrapped into marriage with the daughter of Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of State: a marriage productive of the usual consequences of such imprudent arrangements—neglect on the one side, unhappiness ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... at all the petits soupers—petit only in name—of the capital, passing the nights in running from salon to salon, and seldom retiring to rest before morning: a worthy pupil of that Hercules of debauchery, Richelieu, his master and his executioner. Terrified at the delicate appearance of his child, his father dared not send him to school, but had him brought up under his own eye, with all the patience of an indulgent parent and the solicitude of a physician. Five years' cares ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... triumph, he proved no more than a 'lath painted to look like iron'. Such is the case against Seneca. That it can be rebutted entirely it is impossible to claim. But we must remember the age in which he lived. Its love of debauchery was only equalled by its prurient love of scandal. Seneca's banishment on the charge of an intrigue with Livilla is not seriously damaging. The accusation may have been true: it is at least as likely to have been false, for it was instigated by Messalina. That he ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... understand me. I suppose it's hopeless that you ever will. We are too different. You regard me as a vulgar reprobate, who by some odd freak of nature happens to be akin to you. I can picture so well what your imagination makes of me. All the instances of debauchery and general blackguardism that the commerce of life has forced upon your knowledge go towards completing the ideal. It's a pity. I have always felt that you and I might have been a great deal to each other if you had had a reasonable education. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... worse off than any one in the King's service, for all others could earn distinction; added, that idleness was the mother of all vice, and that it gave him much pain to see his only son abandon himself to debauchery and bad company; but that it would be cruel to blame a young man, forced as it were into these follies, and to say nothing against him by ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to that of Charles James Fox. His sketches of scenery in Scotland reminded Mrs. Montagu of the vigour of Salvator Rosa, combined with the grace of Claude Lorraine! At the age of nineteen, already affianced to Miss Warburton, he went on the Grand Tour, and excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery abroad. Mr. James Boswell found a Circe at Siena, Lyttelton found Circes everywhere. He returned to England in 1765; and that learned lady, Mrs. Carter, the translator of Epictetus, 'admired his talents and elegant manners, as much as she detested ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... German diary show that on the 19th the German soldiers gave themselves up to debauchery in the streets of Liege, and on the night of the 20th (Thursday) a massacre took place in the streets, beginning near the Cafe Carpentier, at which there is said to have been a dinner attended by Russian and other students. A proclamation issued by General Kolewe on the following day gave the German ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... else but love—its beauty, its holiness, its spirituality, its devil knows what!—excuse me; but it does so bore me. They don't know what they're talking about. I do. They think they have achieved the perfection of love because they have no bodies. Sheer imaginative debauchery! Faugh! ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... with its godlessness and its debauchery, was born. Hypocrisy watched over its infancy. When Louis reformed, and took a pious elderly second wife, it was the fashion to be religious; and whoever wished to stand well at court followed the fashion. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Tristan, the king went to the house of the Fleming for those diversions with which King Louis XI. diverted himself. History has taken care to transmit to our knowledge the licentious tastes of a monarch who was not averse to debauchery. The old Fleming found, no doubt, both pleasure and profit in lending himself to the capricious pleasures ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... clamoring for money and gold bangles. Accordingly Nana hastened back to Cawnpore and scattered wealth with a lavish hand; and sought to hide his fears by boastful proclamations, and to drown his anxieties in drink and debauchery. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... maintained his ascendancy over the people of England, by his earnest and continually directed efforts towards these two important ends. His court was a rare example of irreproachable conduct, from which all debauchery and immorality were banished; while such was his deep and intimate though mysterious acquaintance with every occurrence throughout the commonwealth, its subjects had the certainty of knowing that, sooner or later, whatever crimes they committed would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... later, a great battle was fought. The Spaniards outnumbered the invaders, and were better provided with munitions of war; yet the pirates, fighting with the bravery of desperate men, were victorious, and the city fell into their hands. Then followed days of murder, plunder, and debauchery. Morgan saw his followers, maddened by liquor, scoff at the idea of discipline and obedience. Fearing that while his men were helplessly drunk the Spaniards would rally and cut them to pieces, he set fire to the city, that the stores of rum might be destroyed. After sacking ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... acts. A student while in a hilarious mood one night did a decapitating operation on one of the bodies. His loot was the head of an old man with patriarchal beard and he carried it around from one place of debauchery to another, exhibiting it to gaping crowds of a ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... before breakfast after two or three nights of debauchery, and offer him a jug of absinthe with a horned toad in it for his pony and saddle, and you will get them. Even in his more sober and thoughtful moments you can swap a suit of red medicated flannels with him for ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... must be given the native communities against the low-down whites who seek to intrude into them and build habitations for convenient resort upon occasions of drunkenness and debauchery, and some adequate machinery set up for suppressing the contemptible traffic in adulterated spirits they subsist largely upon. The licensed liquor-dealers do not themselves sell to Indians, but they notoriously sell to men who notoriously peddle to Indians, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck |
